


Hourly Challenge: Spidey the Skell (multiple prompts)

by NullNoMore



Series: Hourly Challenge [13]
Category: Xenoblade Chronicles X
Genre: Ch. 5 has a little blood, Demon's Pocket, Detonation-F superweapon, Doug has trouble with restraints, Doug will be just fine, Hartmut the Calamity, Hourly Challenge, I build a new skell, Oblivia, Spidey 005, cliff hanger, complete and I'm a little surprised at that, don't worry it will be fine, explosions as promised, fight fight fight!, geeking about gear, not OctoTraveller skell no no no, now going into the Oblivia Gap, promised explosions but not yet, prompt what prompt?, repeated cliffhangers sorry, skell graveyard, skell yes, something with 5+ limbs, that cave is not at ALL creepy, that's it just me going on about an OC skell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:55:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24965560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NullNoMore/pseuds/NullNoMore
Summary: Doug and Alexa test the Spidey 005, a completely OC skell, in Oblivia. Then Doug decides to take it for a test run into the giant chasm, the Yawning Gap. This does not go as smoothly as he expected.Skell geekery, swears, explosions, too many cliffhangers. Prompts are: things with 5+ limbs, black, indoors, group shot, round, pair, red, pair 2.0.All the good things belong to Monolith Soft, but I built Spidey.
Series: Hourly Challenge [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664095
Comments: 15
Kudos: 1





	1. Something with 5+ Limbs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doug and Alexa need to test a prototype skell with 8 legs/arms/limbs. Mostly Alexa does the testing, while Doug watches.

"I still say this is a bad idea," Doug grumbled into his headset.

A twinkling square on his video display brightened noticeably as his teammate gave him a big grin from the cockpit of her own skell. "Come on, Dougie," Alexa answered brightly. "You said that about every other location I suggested. This was the only one that we came close to agreeing on."

"Only because the other ones were worse. Come on. Admit it. The Noctilucent Sphere? Do you have a death wish?!"

"It would have been a great testing location," Alexa argued back, her smile still blinding. "Climbing all the way up to the sphere, navigating the underside of the curve, weaving through the vines, ..."

"... dying immediately because you woke up an intergalactic menace of legendary horror ..."

"I would never!" Alexa sounded so shocked he almost believed her. "I am the model of restraint."

"You're piloting a prototype skell and you're itching to test it out by pushing it to its limits. You're not fooling anyone."

The video went from twinkling to blazing as Alexa's smile filled her entire face. "Oh yeah, baby, I want to dance all over those limits, with all eight feet. Spidey 005 is gonna be a game changer."

"I still think that's a dumb name for a skell."

"I was not naming it OctoTraveller like you wanted. Don't worry, Sakuraba will name it something boring when it's given a general release. Which is never gonna happen until it gets fully tested. So let's go go gooooo!"

Alexa really didn't need to nag him. Doug was almost as curious about the new skell as she was. It had originally been designed to help BLADEs reach higher locations on the planet. Then the flight pack had made any further development unnecessary. However, a contingent of Prospectors and Pathfinders had recently lobbied for a fresh look at the design. Unlike standard skells, the prototype had four pairs of limbs, and was capable of moving using one, two, three or all four sets. The idea was that something this good at climbing walls would be perfect for exploring caves where flight was at best clumsy and at worst likely to invite ferocious enemy attention.

A few minutes later they reached their destination in Oblivia: Demon's Pocket, a cave located on the southern edge of the bottomless crevasse that cut through the continent. The cave entrance was several meters below the lip of the canyon, accessible only by flight. Or possibly by climbing using this new skell.

Doug maneuvered his skell carefully until he was hovering motionless over the sandy ground, then released the payload. Spidey (with Alexa inside) dropped the small distance, landing with a bounce. Doug was worried the round skell would roll over the cliff and he'd have to punch the accelerator to rescue his teammate. Nothing went amiss, however. The sphere flattened and the eight legs extended, halting it as soon as it had moved enough for Doug to land smoothly.

"Okay, let's review the plan," Doug said into the comms.

"Got it, got it," Alexa said impatiently. The spider skell appeared to be dancing, just as she'd promised."First I check mobility, like this." She was busily extending and retracting each leg, then each pair, then opposing pairs. Spidey twirled and scuttled up and over Doug's own heavier skell.

"Cut that out," he growled.

"Limb mobility, check. Foot attachment, check. Balance at up to ... let me see, 50 degree shift ... check."

"You're going to need more than 50 degrees," Doug said worriedly.

"I'll take it slow. Let's get me tethered."

Doug's boots hit the deep sand with a whisper and he pulled a metal cable out from his skell, hooking it to the top of Alexa's. Side by side, you could see how small the prototype was. He banged against the window of the pilot's capsule, waiting to see her thumbs up, then returned to his own skell. He'd fly alongside her skell as it climbed down to the cave, acting as a safety line in case of accident.

Alexa and Spidey approached the edge of the chasm with more patience than their earlier playfulness would have suggested. Alexa talked wild, but Doug knew she was deeply professional. He listened to her stream of comments and measurements, everything from environmental temperature to tension on each leg joint. The skell perched on the edge, than slid smoothly over and around the cliff. Doug engaged his engines and flew gently after her, maintaining enough of a distance to avoid any backwash from his propulsion but not enough to tug on the line.

Spidey made the climb without incident and Doug landed next to it when they reached the inner cave entrance. Alexa popped her head out and grinned at him. "We would have gotten here faster if I hadn't had to keep that line from tangling. I could have twisted around that last pipe instead of inching sideways like a crab."

"Next time you can go up the Sphere all on your ownsome."

"Cool beans, Dougy! Promise?"

"Promise. Now, are you gonna go map the ceiling of this joint or what?"

"Hand me those 3d laser scanners and let me at it. Just don't start a fight with any cantors out of boredom."

"Trust me, I won't."

And he didn't. At least, not until Alexa dropped a scanner on the head of one, leaving him to face an enraged enemy with almost as many limbs as Spidey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Olberic's theme on loop, I wonder why. I could tell you a lot more about Spidey 005, it's size, specs, uses, development. Be grateful I stuck with the one hour limit.
> 
> You need more of Alexa and Doug testing things? Over on fanfiction dot net, check out Dances with Saltat, which has actual action and character development as well as much skell enthusiasm, mmm skellssssss. Also tango and wild backstory. It's M for watch out for ch. 3, cw harm, the rest is cheerfully T. I got a lot of Alexa/Doug content over that way.
> 
> Or you can go to the next part, because it turns out there is more.


	2. Hourly Challenge: Black

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alexa and Doug continue their mission with the prototype skell from the last chapter. Mostly dialogue and skell geekery. 
> 
> Written fast and edited barely, whooo!
> 
> All the good things (except Spidey) belong to Monolith Soft.

"Alexa, did you have to do that to me?" Doug complained hottly, once he'd finished beating off the enraged six-armed cave monster, plus its equally angry neighbor, plus the giant sharp-billed bird that had decided to swoop down to join the fun.

Alexa was ignoring him, as she'd ignored his calls for help earlier when the cantor had landed the first of four quick punches. She was currently planted on the ground, digging at a sensor with something that was too pointy to be a standard screwdriver. Small bits of the prototype skell surrounded her. Doug guessed that they were originally some of its feet. Alexa loved skells, worshiped them almost, but she was also enthusiastic about taking them apart when she had the chance.

"Stop messing about with Spidey the Skell," Doug said, wincing as he used her silly nickname for the mech. "We'll pack the junk in the trunk, strap it onto my skell, and you can fly home in the jump seat. You'll fit."

She looked up at him and gave a cheerful growl. "Grrrrrrr." Something clicked in her hands and she bent her head back down. Her nose was sunk into the wiring and Doug knew that there wasn't any point nagging anymore. He wondered how soon he should call in to NLA to warn them that the mission was going long.

In the meantime, he looked around the cave. Trickles of sand sifted down from the ceiling, covering the floor with soft white ripples. Dull green crystals shot at awkward angles up toward the ceiling. taller than the skell and cantors combined. He could just make out the entrance, and the originally dim light was dwindling. They'd be lucky to get back by dinner.

"Now let's see if that's better," Alexa said to no one in particular, hopping up and brushing off the knees of her armor. She jammed the repaired foot back onto an upper limb of Spidey. The skell responded with a satisfying whoosh of intake air. Doug was going to begin his nagging but he was silenced by the speed that Alexa went about repairing all the other limbs. In less than five minutes, the ground was clear, Spidey was humming, and a newcomer would never have suspected the earlier scene of mechanical carnage.

"Can we go now?" he said glumly.

He was surprised by her response, which proved that she had heard him all along, just hadn't wanted to answer. "I would have helped out a bunch with that fight, Doug, but check it out!" Alexa waggled one of the skell's feet at Doug. "No weapons."

"Stupid move. More arms should mean more guns," he argued.

"Sure, flex for me, why don't ya?" Alexa laughed. "This thing is a lover, not a fighter. When that sensor slipped, Spidey was half way ready to follow. Some of this sand must have gotten jammed in the intake. I was doing my best to keep attached to the roof."

"You'd have been fine. The ceiling's not that high. Then maybe you could have jumped out and helped with some ground fire."

She waved at the crystals surrounding them. "I was more worried about getting impaled, Doug. These crystals are wicked sharp at the top."

Doug sighed. "Well, at least there aren't any more enemy for you to antagonize. Go finish the job."

Alexa was ignoring him again, swiping at her comm device. Then she looked up and smiled at him. "Nah, I got enough info, plus a full scan of the ceiling. Those scanners are pretty efficient. Look!" She waved the screen at him with glee. "The last data was registering as it was mid air!"

"So we can go home?" He knew her well enough not to assume that if they were done, yes, of course, they'd head home.

"Sure, I guess. Or..."

"Or..." he ground out.

"We could do one teeny little test more. Just a small one."

"Uh huh."

"Like, I was good climbing inside."

"Except for the falling."

"I didn't fall. Whole point. I dropped stuff, but I didn't fall."

"Great."

"So a little more climbing would round things out nicely."

"Where?"

"Down into the gap."

"Into the YAWNING GIANT?"

"You know another gap?"

Doug was speechless, although he ran through a series of gestures to express his dismay and horror. He leaned down at her, gripping for words that utterly failed him with both hands, bobbing his head in a vehement "NO!" Maybe H.B. could explain how very bad an idea this was. Alexa smiled brightly up at him. Doug finally pulled his hands through his buzz cut hair and took a deep breath. "That pit is a skell killer, Alexa. No bottom, and freak atmospherics that would keep me from following. There's a reason pilots aren't allowed to test the limits."

"I won't be flying. Climbing, Dougie, climbing!" She patted one of Spidey's many knees.

"Alexa, I know what's going to happen. I'll sit on the ledge with a cable, and you're going to slip past that limit, and at a certain point, I'm going to feel a snap in the cable and ..."

"Doug! Excellent imagination! Not going to happen. Promise."

Doug looked at the face of his teammate, and knew that nothing he could say was going to prevent this. His face hardened. "Fine. One condition."

"Whatever."

"I pilot it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliffhanger! I will cheese next week's prompt to write a follow-up.
> 
> ...
> 
> Be grateful that I didn't go with my first idea for the prompt (Lao's pants).  
> pleasesendhelp


	3. Indoors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few days before the previous stories, Alexa and Doug tested Spidey the OctoSkell in the comfort of the Outfitters' Hangar. Which is indoors, so this counts for the prompt.
> 
> All the good things besides Spidey belong to Monolith Soft.

_(Three days earlier)_

Alexa was chewing thoughtfully on a knuckle as Doug wriggled in the restraints. "Right, gotta note that down. Chest restraints need to be sized up."

"I'm going to strangle if I finish snapping these up," Doug stated finally. He dropped the buckles in defeat. "You want me to complete the tests without them?"

"No way. Lemme go get an extender. There should be one in the ..." Her voice cut off as she shot through the door of the Outfitters' Hangar, leaving Doug half installed in a brand new prototype skell. Crazy looking thing, less than half the size of even the smallest skell model, with extra limbs in every direction and a disturbing lack of weaponry. It looked like a toy and he'd have dismissed it instantly if anyone less than Alexa hadn't been so enthusiastic about it. Not that Alexa couldn't get enthusiastic about improbable skells; he'd listened to her gush about pipe dreams over lunch enough times. When she tagged him in to test one of them, however, that usually meant the thing deserved some respect.

Doug tested the controls gently, not enough to engage anything, but to reinforce his familiarity with them. Main set of legs controlled by his legs, same as standard, main set of "arms" controlled by hand controls, same, the remaining sets of limbs echoing their movements automatically, with the option to control separately with proper input. The hand controls had additional buttons for other indeterminate purposes, whch made Doug hopeful that maybe they'd slap some weaponry on this critter. It was fine to tell him the skell was intended for non-combat tasks, but there wasn't a team that went out of NLA that wasn't likely to have to shoot _something_ before they had their dinner.

Alexa returned before he got bored, a belt flapping in her hands. Several of them, bless her. The seat belt had just managed to go around his waist, but it dug into his hip if he twisted even slightly. She must have noticed without his needing to tell her.

As she clicked snaps and checked security, he complained gently, "Did the Ma-non design the seat?"

"Naw, but most of the testers have been on the tiny side. Obvious oversight, sorry about that." She grinned at him. "It's not like we're pitching this at your division."

"What's wrong with Harriers?"

"If we were aiming at you guys, we'd plan for ... er ... beefier pilots." She slammed the pilot capsule window shut for him and gave him a thumbs up. "Remember to move slower. I'm not sure how your mass is going to change things."

Doug maneuvered the skell through the first trials, a simple obstacle course of heavy truck tires, raised netting, and minor inclines. The skell was responsive, although he wasn't sure a less-sanguine pilot would be okay with the jolting bounce the skell frequently made as it adjusted itself along the way. One of the legs got tangled in the netting, and he had a chance to use the individual motion controls for each leg to escape the trap carefully. The trial lasted all of five minutes and he reported his thoughts to Alexa.

Alexa noted it all down. "Got it, mmhm, right, skell sickness is always an issue. I'll see if they can increase the gyro shock absorbers."

Doug took a last gulp of fresh air and snuggled back into the skell. Next trials were vertical, and he now he was going slower. Climbing the sample stairs was simple, almost fluid. The ladder-like frame was similarly easy, the tips of the legs/arms shifting to a more hand-like grip. The woven netting was almost impossible for him to manage, however. Left to its own devices, the skell started to wrap itself snugly in the cables. Doug spread each leg at increasing distances, trying for stability, until the skell resembled the inner spokes of a wheel.

"Give it up, Doug," Alex told him through the comm device. "No one's managed it yet. I was hoping you'd bring 'em all to shame, but no such luck." She hopped into a waiting industrial skell and plucked the prototype, with Doug inside, off of the webbing. As soon as the smaller skell was released, the limbs automatically snapped close to the body, almost protectively, until Alexa had set it gently on the hangar floor

It was a full hour before he was finished with the vertical portion of the testing, and a further hour was required for the simplified challenges set on the ceiling of the hangar. Alexa seemed satisfied with the run, although she got in a few more cracks about Doug's extra massive build.

"You can jump out now, Dougy. I know you're dying to shake some circulation into your legs."

"Yeah, sure," Doug said distractedly, flexing the upper legs once more for luck. "Hey, Alexa. These buttons for the arms, you have a plan for them?"

"You have a suggestion? Last I heard, they're going to be for getting the hands to manipulate probe placement."

"So you could pop something on them, right?"

"Sure, I guess. Let the vacuum pads hold onto a tool you need. The suction would be strong enough to shovel or pound pretty hard."

"Or maybe swing a sword?"

"The prototype's too small to hold even the Level 20 baby skell gear."

"What about ground weapons?"

Alexa's bright eyes sparkled and she covered a wicked smile with her hand. "Not sure if I can rig up a way for you to light up a beam sabre, Dougy. Least not at a moment's notice. You might have to settle for my javelin."

"Or I could manage a long sword. Or three."

Her laugh was loud and low. "Lemme see what we have lying around."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know how I said to be grateful I didn't totally geek out about Spidey's specs two stories ago? Sorry about that. I'm not quite done, but it will depend on next week's prompt.
> 
> Oh, hey, Doug had problems with restraints when testing something for Alexa another time, in a possibly M way. Double dog dare you to pop over to fan fiction dot net and read Doug and Alexa Do a Test.


	4. Group Shot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doug continues the test of Spidey the Octoskell, inching his way into the bottomless abyss in Oblivia. It is going really well. Don't worry!
> 
> Slight swears, way too much skell geekery. More than one hour, but I was having fun.
> 
> All the good things belong to Monolith Soft, but I built Spidey and mapped the area below the weather barrier, so don't blame them.

The abyss looked darker than Doug had ever seen it, foggy and grim and smuggly taunting. Alexa stood beside him, one hand resting on the tether connection, studying the dizzying depths. She was chewing her lip with a ferociousness she usually reserved for when she was pouring over skell schematics. Go on, he thought, show some hesitation and try to talk me out of this. Like that's gonna happen. Like it would work anyway. Something about being around Alexa let his crazy out, and it wasn't getting tucked back in.

"Are you sure you don't want to take my javelin instead?" she asked finally.

He could have laughed. So much for hesitation. She was still worrying about the best weapon for him to take along, strictly just in case. They'd rigged his beam sabre onto one of the minor legs, complete with a trigger that he could engage from the comfort of the pilot seat. That leg was now curled against the body of the skell, leaving him with a mere seven legs to manage the climb. Doug had managed to run a lap around the cave entrance just fine, weaving through stalactites and stalagmites both.

"Too bulky," he pointed out, not for the first time. Plus he didn't want to leave her alone without her best weapon. If he didn't get back, if she had to fight and the bulky skell failed her, if -. He shook his head. Mira offered bad options, but there was not point counting them ahead of time. Planning for them was another matter. The javelin stayed with her, and his sabre was now decorating Spidey. "So we doing this?"

"Oh, you bet we are. Keep that camera rolling and give me a live play along the way, okay?" Another thing she'd managed to fix up was a wired connection from his comms, snaking along the tether. The weather barrier that blocked flight into the deeper levels of the abyss also played hell with electromagnetic communication. If he was going to keep in touch with Alexa, it would have to be using something akin to a tin can telephone, linked by a piece of string. One way, unfortunately, but at least he'd know someone was listening and maybe praying for him.

Once inside the tiny skell, Doug inched his way to the lip of the cave entrance, then made managed the flip, step by multiple step, over the edge and down the side of the cavern. He kept his word, narrating the surprisingly easy climb. He headed for a large sloping rock tube carved in the side of the wall. Or maybe it was buried and half-exposed? He made sure the camera picked up the carvings. They struck him as decorative, but what did he know? Maybe they would mean something to someone eventually. The tube was half as broad as Melville Street, and would make for an easy climb.

He struck the weather barrier when he was maybe 3 meters shy of the tube. He'd flown against the barrier in a regular skell before, and the event had always felt like a blast of air straight up, steady but impossible to overcome. This time it pressed the tiny skell sideways, closer to the rock wall. Spidey's knees bent deeply, and the feet skittered along the surface. Doug let the skell flex, not fighting the force of the atmosphere, and crept slowly downward. As he hoped, the pressure eased up as he slinked down lower. When he reached the tube, there was hardly a breeze to keep him from leaving the wall and exploring the slope of the artificial ledge.

He paused there, filling a silent Alexa in on the trouble, the success, and the situation. From this far down, the late afternoon sun wasn't doing much to light the area. The stones had changed from a dusty beige to a darkened uniform grey. Climbing would be tricky, since it was harder to spot formations. There was only the one light for the camera on the prototype. Spidey could manage slick walls but it was better to have a warning about ledges or changes of angle. It would be smart to turn back now. They'd proved that Spidey could pass through the barrier. The Oblivia gap could be explored without the help of the Ma-non, their little ship, and their ridiculously over-powered shielding. Just this one fact would be a great advancement.

Naturally, Doug decided to climb just a little further.

He'd spotted what looked like a small opening in the wall, tucked under a bend before the carved tube plunged straight down. Even with the limited light, it would make for an easy climb. Spidey swayed slightly on the far downside, and the restraints cut into Doug's shoulders, but he didn't have any trouble piloting the machine. Sure enough, the opening was more than a dark spot. Doug maneuvered the skell into the entrance of a new cave.

This one didn't have a proper flat floor like the larger cave above. The shaft cut into the rock wall sunk into a vee at the bottom, mirrored by a sharper angle in the roof. The light of the camera swung around to reveal walls that were traced with wavy lines, like worm tracks. The lower groove sloped up towards the back, spreading and flattening as it went. In the far shadows, something metallic glinted. Doug had a few more meters of tether before he had to return. Spidey skittered further into the cave.

A few steps and Doug hit the brakes hard. Maybe he felt that first warning tug on the tether. Maybe it was what he saw. At the end of the cave sat six or seven wrecked skells. They were lined up like discarded dolls, listing against each other. An Ares 70 bent forward unnaturally. Next to it slumped a level 20 baby skell, the kind given to newbie pilots, tipped into the lap of what had probably been a Verus. All of the mechs were damaged. Wiring and plates were torn from legs and arms. Weaponry stuck out in splinters from the backs. Every single pilot's compartment was torn open.

Chewed open.

When the cave darkened behind him, Doug wasn't even surprised. He had pulled Spidey's eighth limb free and lit up the beam sabre while he was still spinning the skell around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CLIFF HANGER AHHHHHHHHHHH! Creepy Coraline music on loop, "Dispair", very effective.


	5. Round

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doug is fighting something really big in a cramped space. It's not going well.
> 
> Slight swears, harm, mention of "blood", menace. Badly written fight scene. Geeking over gameplay. Under-edited because I'm running late. Completely ignored the prompt, sorry.
> 
> All the good things belong to Monolith Soft, but I built Spidey the underpowered Octoskell.

There was an advantage to the photon saber over the javelin that Doug hadn't considered when he'd left the safety of the surface world. The spluttering blue blade lit up the cramped and darkened crevice that was now his battlefield. Every swing helped him see exactly what he was fighting. That was about all the help the sword was providing though, he had to admit to himself.

To be honest, he didn't need the extra light, certainly not to let him know what he was fighting. The first triple blast the creature launched at him had cleared that question up sufficiently. Doug recognized that blast, and its effects. His vision had blurred immediately, making it hard to see any further than the already blinding tip of the photon sabre. BLADE called the status "virus", although it was more a venom as far as the Curators could tell. A fighter couldn't see far enough to aim and fire their guns except in the roughest "wave and pray" way.

"Joke's on you; I don't even HAVE a ranged weapon."

If that blast hadn't been enough to let him know, the photon saber confirmed it. Doug was now going multiple toe to multiple toe against Hartmut the freaking Calamity, or at least against as much of the giant millepod's maw as it could jam into the cave. Its multiple limbs, fanning out around it's slinky center body, dug into the walls of the cavern, bracing it against the puny blows from Spidey the Octoskell. Doug's best hope would be to aim for an eye or an antennae, but he was having trouble reaching past all the rows and rows of slashing teeth.

It wasn't as impossible as it looked. He kept telling himself that. He'd managed to avoid being bitten. He'd managed to snap off at least one flailing leg. He'd even managed to shave off the front fin, although that hadn't been quite the bonus he'd hoped for. Doug had been so happy to finally see the shining round lock-on target and feel his sword repeatedly slice into it. At first Hartmut had recoiled from the wound, arching and slamming against the roof of the cavern. However, without the wedge of fin on its back, the creature was able to jam itself deeper into the cavern, pushing Doug and Spidey back towards the row of abandoned skells.

He didn't like the company and he didn't feel any safety on this back shelf of cavern. Retreat hadn't saved any of the other pilots, although Doug wasn't sure they'd come here of their own volition. "Not like some idiots I could name," he mumbled to himself as he blocked a particularly insistant leg. Close up, he was surprised by how much the millepod used its limbs to fight. He'd never heard about this tactic, but then again no one had ever been idiot enough to fight a millepod this close. Best practice was to blast Hartmut at a distance. Currently, Doug would have preferred the distance of a full continent, maybe two. Noctilum, for example, looked nice at sunset.

He needed to get his act together. Focused as he was with the first leg, he had missed a feint from the side. Another leg struck Spidey, strong enough to break into the pilot's capsule. The tip sliced into Doug's shoulder and pinned him. His left arm went slack. Luckily it wasn't the arm controlling the beam saber, but this was plenty dire. Doug twisted his body as much as the restraints would allow, trying to dislodge the pointed tip from his body. He didn't dare move his working hands from the controls. He even smacked it with his head a couple times, awkwardly but with every bit of force he could manage. It was enough. The leg slid out from the capsule, not that this was a huge relief. It rejoined the continued flurry of enemy blows.

Doug was relieved when his wounded arm started to respond again, although the skell controls were getting slick from mim circulatory fluid. He didn't like that the cavern was getting darker, and possibly not from Hartmut or the virus effect. Now might be a good time to come up with a new plan, something that would change the likely ending.

He reviewed the situation in between flailing weakly at the monster, trying to think of advantages he could use. He came up with a rotten list. He had this rare chance to fight Hartmut close up, oh goody. He could have slapped it, if it weren't for all those teeth. He had his favorite beam sabre, which wasn't up to snuff. He had the company of a mess of thoroughly wrecked skells.

"What's it weak to? Think, Barret!" Thermal, maybe gravity, he wasn't sure about that, not while his head was sore from pounding on the attacker. The models and brands of sabers that would have been ideal scrolled in his head, along with prices and payment plans. Sadly, he was wielding Sakuraba's finest, light and fast and shooting out beam energy that Hartmut was practically immune to. He hadn't planned on fighting a tyrant the size of a land bridge, now had he?

Hartmut must be becoming used to his puny blows. It wedged its curving maw tighter into the cavern, and Doug scrambled back between the wreckage of the Verus and the baby skell. The larger skell crumpled and split along its back, not the encouragement that Doug needed right now. A heavy block of metal crashed against Spidey. "Come on! I so do NOT need friendly fire right now." Doug used a free arm to push it away, then two arms, because the metal apparatus was heavier than he'd expected. He slashed at another darting enemy appendage, then took a moment to get a better grip on the debris before pushing it away. "I should use it as a club; it might work better ... than ..."

It would most definitely work better than. It wasn't a hunk of scrap metal. It was a mid-model Detonation-F, and undamaged as far as Doug could tell in microsecond of inspection. Doug wished like hell he knew how fire resistant Spidey the Octoskell was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Light it up, Doug! Oh, right, there was a prompt. I used the word "round"! Once. Will this still count?


	6. Pair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doug and Hartmut face off. They make an odd pair, and I declare that I have matched the prompt.
> 
> Small swears, cliff hanger.
> 
> All the good things belong to Monolith Soft, including the flail. Spidey the Octoskell is mine.

This match-up was so unfair, Doug thought. On one side, an indigen enemy longer than a football field, longer than a city block, and with more teeth than all of the Harrier division. On the other, a micro-skell, not even an official one. A mere prototype, armed with a salvaged skell weapon plus a useless ground one, and controlled by an injured pilot who'd only driven the thing for a few hours.

What Doug said out loud, in a steady growl: "This is going to work."

It took more than one of Spidey the Octoskell's puny limbs to lift the abandoned weapon. Three, to be exact. Doug would have used more except he couldn't disengage the beam saber from the last minor limb and he desperately needed the major limbs to maneuver. Hartmut's monstrous multi-leveled jaw crashed into the back shelf of the cave as Doug shook the Detonation-F flail free from the wreckage of its original owner. Part of Doug was impressed by the internal programming that let Spidey dance out of reach without requiring more than a nudge of the controls. Part of him wished for a skell that had more weight than an inflatable toy.

He ducked the skell low, almost flat to the floor of the shelf, and slung the flail over the tiny mech's shoulder. Rock fragments rained down on him, pinging off the pilot's capsule. One chip managed to ricochet through the break in the window, stinging his cheek. He didn't like that, not because of the minor insult, but because it reminded him of problems he couldn't solve. If this worked, if the scavenged weapon actually fired and did some damage to the giant beast trying to eat him entire, then there would also be some extra fire as a result. There would be a fireball that would fill the cave. No matter how good Spidey's thermal resistance was (and he wasn't sure if it was any good at all), that break in the glass would mean trouble. Doug didn't have a spare hand to repair it, or a spare second to do it even if he had.

But if he didn't, he might end up baked alive inside the skell. He skinned off a glove, the one on his injured side, using his teeth to allow the other hand to stay on the controls, and jammed it into the hole. The finggers flopped stiffly, waving at him, batting his face when he turned in that direction.

It was a dreadful repair job. Completely useless, to be honest. Doug recognized that it was a delaying tactic and pulled himself together. "This is going to work," he reminded himself, "and I am never coming ... I am not coming back here until I have Spidey 2.0, the Tarantulator."

He hefted the flail on his skell's shoulder, felt the tiny mech wobble backward, tried to dig in with the lower legs to keep from toppling. Hartmut had figured out that its prize was no longer at the roof of the cave and had stopped scraping the stalactites off the ceiling. It pulled back for a new lunge and the rush of outgoing air almost dragged Doug and Spidey off the shelf, even with the anchor of the flail.

Doug couldn't quite measure the gap between him and Hartmut, because of the darkness and the blinding from the virus status and the headache from smacking the leg tip. But there WAS a gap. This was probably the last chance. "Do it," he muttered, and he scrabbled at the flail's manual engagement trigger with one of the major upper legs.

Nothing. The air pressure was shifting, and Hartmut's snout and thousands of teeth were headed directly for him. He didn't need to see it to know it. He slapped it with the other upper leg, then with one of the lower legs. Hell, he grabbed it with all seven of Spidely's free limbs. The tiny skell flipped onto its back, clinging to the base of the flail. Hartmut was going to bite his butt, and that was the most undignified end he could imagine. The limb with the beam sabre was waving helplessly, sizzling the ground and the edge of the cave walls. He smacked the flail with the beam and then...

And then things started to happen, thank god.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliffhanger because I ran out of time and also I'm STILL not sure what happens when you use this weapon in a small enclosed space. Bad things. Blowy up things. I'm looking forward to next week.
> 
> Oh my god, I'm hitting the refresh button OF MY OWN BRAIN hoping that there is an update...


	7. Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story so far: Doug is piloting Spidey the prototype Octoskell and unintentionally has gotten into a fight with Hartmut the really large in the big gap in Oblivia. Plus: He's found an abandoned superweapon, a Detonation-F thermal flail. Con: it's not going to be enough.
> 
> Underedited, and yet ANOTHER cliffhanger because I keep running out of time.
> 
> All the good things belong to Monolith Soft, including the direct quote from Sakuraba (thank you, wiki!). Spidey the Octoskell is my OCskell.

What marketing promised would happen: "Air support? Let's get dead instead! YOU become the artillery in this high risk offensive. " (direct quote from Sakuraba's product introduction brochure)

What the designers intended would happen: The Detonation-F weapon first extends backwards from a skell, the broad blunt tip reaching several meters behind on a thick chain-like cable. Once fully extended, the head of the flail activates, the temperature reaching upward of 1000 degrees, just short of melting steel. The pause to reach the final temperature is brief, and then the skell can flick the chain up and over, crashing the glowing red tip into the ground (or enemy) directly in front. Thermal damage radiates at half the distance of the chain, creating a explosive fireball that will evaporate lesser enemy swarms and severely damage larger targets.

What Doug hoped would happen: The flail wasn't enough to put an end to Hartmut, but the amount of heat the thing would emit would be enough to surprise the beast, blast it out of the cave, and allow Doug and Spidey the Octoskell to scuttle out of the cave and up to safety.

What Doug thought would happen: The flail would go boom and then Hartmut would eat him entire. But Alexa might get a clue and call in the reinforcements and maybe he'd see tomorrow. Jonah had survived a couple nights in a whale, after all. Except Jonah hadn't been fried to a crisp first.

What happened: The smack from the beam saber shot enough energy into the abandoned weapon to engage it, but Doug hadn't had enough time to get Spidey back onto its feet before the chain extended violently. Even splitting Spidey's limbs equally between clutching the flail and digging into the ground to anchor the mech probably wouldn't have helped. As it was, Spidey was clinging to the base of the flail with seven of its eight legs and when the chain extended, it wasn't the tip of the flail that moved. That stayed solidly back on the ground. Instead, Doug and Spidey flew through the air, shot directly into Hartmut's tiers and tiers of teeth.

Was it lucky for Doug that Hartmut had its jaws slightly open, enough that Spidey wasn't smashed against a wall of teeth? Possibly. Doug wasn't glad for the intimate chance to explore one of Hartmut's multiple mouths. The weight of the tiny prototype skell wasn't enough to startle the monstrosity. The limited window of escape started to close as Hartmut's teeth slid neatly together. Through the narrowing gap, Doug managed to catch a glimpse of the head of the flail, now glowing cheerfully from the safety of the shelf.

Four of Spidey's limbs were still firmly attached to the handle of the flail. Doug braced three legs against a combination of tongue, cheek, and palate and yanked hard.

What Doug thought would happen: The flail would go boom on the shelf and Hartmut would still swallow him whole.

What Doug hoped would happen: He could use the chain to pull himself free and the explosion would give him enough time to come up with a new plan.

What the designers intended would happen: The flail's tip had powerful gyroscopes that would prevent the weapon from pulling back into the user. Once engaged to retract, it would first curve forward and around the skell. It would not return until it had detonated on a solid object.

What marketing promised would happen: "Just make sure your Skell is insured, because the only way out is in a slag bag! *This product is non-refundable." (direct quote from Sakuraba's product introduction)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I know what happens next week. Hopefully the prompt is easy to cheese. I am having fun, squee.


	8. Pair redux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doug vs Hartmut 8.0, now with explosions. Spidey the Skell concludes!
> 
> Small swears, no cliffhangers! Completely ignoring the prompt this time, sorry.
> 
> All the good things belong to Monolith Soft, but Spidey the Skell is my OC skell.

Doug and Spidey pulled hard on the handle of the flail. The light shining the weapon's tip changed from a cheerful glow to a burning scarlet that sliced through Hartmut's jagged bite. Doug directed the skell to jump up, toward the ever narrowing gap between the teeth. He didn't release the handle, mostly because he was too busy scrambling to work the three available limbs, but he did notice that the chain wasn't slacking.

"Damn it, we're not moving." They must be slipping on the tongue or gums. What an embarrassing and disgusting way to go, he thought. To his horrified eyes, the monster's teeth were growing larger and more threatening. Then they raked along the window of the skell with a terrible screeching sound. "Come on, not fair. This thing has retractable jaws?!"

A moment later Doug realized part of his best hopes had been come true. The teeth were scraping the skell because he was moving out and past them. Spidey and its pilot had pulled and jumped their way to freedom. They hadn't reached safety though. Doug and Spidey were balanced on the lips of Hartmut's second lowest jaw. Doug pushed Spidey to make one more jump as the tyrant monster opened its maw again.

The chain still hadn't gone slack.

Spidey skidded on its belly onto the shelf, rear legs flailing. Doug used an upper arm (the one with the saber) to flip the skell on its back so he could get a glimpse of his eventual doom. Hartmut was snapping its jaws, blasting the area like bellows with every bite. Spidey and Doug were just a little too low for it to catch, but that wouldn't last. Already it was tilting its massive body, angling to scrape the soldier and mech from the cliff shelf. Spidey managed to get a purchase on the edge of the rock with one leg, then two, then all four lower legs. Feet spread wide and digging in firmly, the skell bent itself upright. Doug was going to meet his end standing.

And still the chain hadn't gone slack.

He hadn't dropped the handle. Four limbs stuck into the ground. One arm waved a ground weapon, useless as a kid's glow stick. That left three arms curled uselessly back over the skell's tiny rounded shoulder, clinging to the leash of the Detonation-F. The super weapon's explosive end was somewhere behind him, filling the cave with a dull and feverish red and doing nothing else.

Not exactly nothing. That chain hadn't gone slack.

Doug gave one more tug on the handle, not so much as an offensive tactic as one final act of resistance, leaning into this last brief fight. If the flail was only going to be good for an anchor, maybe he could use it to help him dart in and pull back, dart in and pull back. He could get a few tiny hits in before he missed the timing and found out what it was like to be bait.

He almost rolled forward off the edge of the shelf as the skell's arms whipped up and over. The chain, still taut, lifted over his shoulder as the head of the flail rose up behind him. Black giants, the shadows of the wrecked skells, raced across the cave walls, then sunk into nothing as the glowing tip dawned like a red sun. Doug now felt the skell being pushed backwards. He dropped Spidey down into a crouch, spreading the legs even wider, low enough that the free arm could join in the effort to stabilize the skell.

As the weapon's explosive end crested and then slammed down on Hartmut's intrusive snout, the light it emitted flashed instantaneously from red to the most brilliant white explosion that Doug had ever seen. The sound didn't even register for Doug; his mechanical ears had the advantage over organic ones and shut down immediately. No combat-related hearing loss in his future, if he had a future. But he felt the explosion in his chest, in his gut, and he'd remember that feeling for the rest of his life. If he had the rest of a life.

Spidey's tiny legs were no match for this explosion, but to Doug's horror he wasn't pushed backwards. Instead, he felt the skell pulled forward, into the space that was filled with Hartmut, Hartmut's teeth, and Hartmut's mouth. And the explosive tip of the Detonation-F.

Except that the space was empty, or rather, it was empty of Hartmut. The narrow cavern was filled now with pure explosion, an unending fury of white and heat and destruction, and Doug was zooming through this corridor of storm. Somewhere ahead of him a giant monster was being pushed out by the front of the shockwave, but Doug had the leisure to tumble around in the madness.

The Detonation-F's explosion should have been over now, but the blast kept rolling, now with sparks of electricity and a thrum of gravitational blast shooting through it. He should have been dead several seconds ago, but finding that not to be the case, Doug did what he did best: he maneuvered the skell in the swirling madness, reaching out with the legs to find an edge of the cavern, angling the arms to control tumbling and doing his best to direct its movements. An outsider, if they could have seen anything in the white hot light, would have seen a glittering spider flailing and whirling and occasionally bouncing off the wall with a metallic ping that was utterly drowned by the roar of the destructive wind. But Doug convinced himself that he was getting a handle on the turbulence and that any moment he could step out of the madness.

The cavern was almost too short for him to manage it in time. The energy wave poured out of the narrow slot cut into the wall of the greater abyss and dispersed. Doug and Spidey came to a skidding halt at the very entrance of the cavern, hanging by six legs on the upper curve. Out in the open air of the abyss, Hartmut curled back on itself in a squirming looping flip. Its howls were silent. Doug shook his head, hoping to bring his ears back on-line, and jammed his foot down on the accelerator. Spidey scrambled up the wall of the abyss.

Later, Doug swore to Alexa that the zig-zag path he'd taken up the canyon wall was a defensive measure, not because every system was struggling, including the pilot himself. He swore that he knew from the start that the dark shadow hovering above the weather barrier was a very worried Alexa, flying Doug's own skell. That the yelp she'd heard over the comm wasn't terror when she'd managed to lasso the skittering prototype. She'd just knocked the wind out of him, that was it. And he swore, over and over, that he'd know the shape of the cavern would aim every flame of the flail's explosion, as well as additional explosions from the other weapons in the skell graveyard, directly into Hartmut's ugly face.

"Shaped charges, ya know?" he'd babbled as Alexa did a hasty patch on his shoulder before flying them back to NLA. His hand gestures weren't helping either his explanation or her attempts at first aid. "Kind of like a funnel but outward? Tiny in the back but BOOM in the front?"

"Sure thing, Dougie, sure thing. You need another pain shot?"

"Just fine, 'lexa. Say, we gonna come back again? I have a thing or two to say to that goldfish."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done. The prompt may not be obvious but it did influence how the ending went (namely the wrecked skells also helping the explosions).
> 
> If you have a suggestion, request, prompt, throw them at me. I'm begging. I need something to distract me from Soulmate Goose AU, but with Saltat.


End file.
